Quantifying Effort in American Football

Emily Shteynberg, Luke Snavely, Sheryl Solorzano

Background and Motivation

  • Not all rushing yards are equal

  • Traditional stats miss the “how” behind yards gained

  • Can we “measure” effort using tracking data?

  • No universal way to evaluate effort

    • Intangible and subjective
    • Depends on player position, defense faced, game context, snap count/play volume, play call/assignment

Our Data: 2022 NFL Season

  • Game, play, player, tracking data from Weeks 1-9 1

  • Running plays where a running back (RB) is the ball carrier

  • Trimmed each play to frames between handoff and end of play

  • Backed out key features:

    • Kinetic energy (KE)= 1/2 mv2
    • Positive work = max {ΔKE, 0}
    • Horizontal displacement of RB
    • Aggregated per-play and per-player metrics

[eda 1 assertion-evidence]

[eda 2 assertion-evidence]

Methods

Plan of Action

Appendix